River of Grass (USA, 1995) 76 min color DIR-SCR: Kelly Reichardt. PROD: Jesse Hartman. STY: Jesse Hartman, Kelly Reichardt. MUSIC: John Hill. DOP: Jim Denault. CAST: Lisa Donaldson, Larry Fessenden, Dick Russell, Stan Kaplan, Michael Buscemi. (Strand Releasing)
This was a blind rental upon checking the video box at the local. Without doing any research, this seems like another mid-90s indie picture that suffers from Quentin Tarantino’s Disease: another pseudo-hip crime flick featuring a lot of secondary characters with the gift of gab. (In actuality, this film’s Sundance debut predates Pulp Fiction, but went into general release a year later.) However slowly, this thoughtful movie gets to you. It evolves as a surprisingly insightful character study, and a dryly hilarious comedy of errors, in which a young couple, Cozy and Lee, hits the road once they think they’ve killed somebody in his backyard after taking a dip in his pool!
Their romantic notion of being a new Bonnie and Clyde is always frustrated (their brand name “Cozy and Lee” doesn’t have the same punch anyway): they can’t come up with the money to pay their hotel room while on the lam, or to buy enough gas to get out of Florida! Hilariously, Lee tries to get gas money by stealing his mother’s records, but he can’t get any money for them! He also attempts to rob a convenience store, but while he hesitates, another guy comes out of nowhere and makes a fast grab. Adding insult to injury, they haven’t got a buck between them to pay the toll booth operator. This film has enough quirky deadpan characters to fill a Hal Hartley screenplay, as we see how the duo’s bumbling acts effect everyone, yet it is done with the absurd wit of a Samuel Beckett play; the “Godot” is the idealized romantic life of the gangster on the road that never comes.
Originally published in Vol. #1, Issue #8.
Greg Woods
Greg Woods has been a film enthusiast since his teens, and began his writing "career" at the same time- prolific in capsule reviews of everything he had watched, first on index cards, then those hardcover dollar store black journals, then an old Mac IIsi. He founded The Eclectic Screening Room in 2001, as a portal to share his film love with the world, and find some like-minded enthusiasts along the way. In addition to having worked in the film industry for over two decades, he has been a co-programmer of films at Trash Palace, and a programmer/co-founder of the Toronto Film Noir Syndicate. He has also written for Broken Pencil, CU-Confidential, Micro-Film, and is currently working on his first novel. His secret desire is for someone to interview him for a podcast or a DVD extra.